Charge Symmetry Breaking and Nuclear Pion Production Reactions

Abstract

Large momentum transfer reactions such as pion production represent the frontier of Chiral Perturbation Theory and must be understood before more complex reactions can be considered. Pion production is also interesting in its own right, one application being the hadronic extraction of a charge symmetry breaking parameter: the contribution of the down-up quark mass difference to the neutron-proton mass difference. This dissertation reports on two primary projects: (1) a calculation of the charge symmetry breaking forward-backward asymmetry of the differential cross section of the n p -> d pi^0 reaction, and (2) the development of a new theoretical framework addressing the issue of reducibility in the impulse approximation's contribution to pion production. It is shown that the traditional one-body impulse approximation must be replaced by a two-body operator which makes a larger contribution to s-wave pion production.

PhD Thesis, 153 pages

References in corpus (8)

• Chiral Perturbation Theory Beyond One Loop
• Leading SU(3)-breaking corrections to the baryon magnetic moments in Chiral Perturbation Theory
• Strong-Isospin Violation in the Neutron-Proton Mass Difference from Fully-Dynamical Lattice QCD and PQQCD
• SU(2) and SU(3) chiral perturbation theory analyses on baryon masses in 2+1 flavor lattice QCD
• Deconstructing triplet nucleon-nucleon scattering
• Precision determination of the dpi -> NN transition strength at threshold
• Remarks on N N -> N N pi beyond leading order
• Impulse approximation in nuclear pion production reactions: absence of a one-body operator